Monday, November 10, 2008

Lack of Paladin Enthusiasm

There's a distinct lack of enthusiasm among paladins these days. Which is sort of odd. More than any other class, Wrath of the Lich King is our expansion. We follow Tirion Fordring to Northrend, to defeat Arthas, the fallen paladin who killed Uther the Lightbringer. All the paladin lore comes to a head in this expansion.

The paladin community should be pumped, should be excited. But it really seems like we're not. Instead, you have paladins quitting, and the sense in the community is more one of resignation than true excitement. It really looked like Blizzard was going to fix us. Instead, they went half-way, stopped, and then nerfed us "to the ground, baby." Put a few band-aids here and there, and called it an expansion.

I canceled my subscription ten days ago. I'm really not sure if I'm going to pick up Wrath. I probably will, just because I have nothing else to do. This time, though, I sort of wish I did have something better.

These are just random thoughts on the three specs:

Holy

Boring spam. Good luck soloing with Holy. Blizzard revamped the Judgement system, but did not fix the Seals. Seal of Righteousness is pulling double duty as both the spellpower Seal and the levelling Seal. Given that we have zero spellpower while levelling, this paradox is really hurting the other Seals, as Blizzard tries to keep SoR from being either underpowered or overpowered.

Paladin damage seals should go in the following structure:

Level 1: AP-based consistent Seal for levelling, also becomes the default Protection Seal at endgame.Level 20: AP-based burst damage Seal, PvP Retribution Seal.Level 64: SP-based consistent damage Seal, for Holy. We start getting spellpower plate around this level, so it makes sense that we get a Seal that can take advantage of that gear.Level 64: AP-based consistent higher damage spell with a drawback. For PvE Retribution.

This setup makes sense. Each Seal has a place and an appropriate job. You don't have to try and force Seals to do what they are not meant to do.

Protection

No 11-point talent. Talk about unfinished. Maybe we'll see one in 3.1. I'm not holding my breath.

Retribution

I'm concerned about the direction Retribution theorycraft is going in. We should be talking about weapons, or debating Armor Penetration versus Haste rating. Instead, all the discussion is focusing around obscure ways to generate mana to power extra Consecrates. Using the Spiritual Attunement Glyph. Chomping Dark Runes. Deliberately taking extra damage to maximize SA returns.

I appreciate resource management as much as the next paladin. But I don't really want the best Ret paladins to be the ones who farm Dark Runes, or are the ones who can take the most damage without dying. It just does not seem right to me. The best Rets should be the ones who can pull off the priority rotation the best, or have the best dps time-on-target, or pop trinkets/Avenging Wrath at exactly the right moment. Or even the ones who can use their Hands or small spells to greatest effect.

Conclusions

Bleh, maybe I'll go watch Inuvusira's movie about the Light of the Dawn again. That seems to be the only thing that gets me half-way interested in Wrath.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm probably not going to quit. I'll probably end up picking up Wrath and resubscribing. I think.

39 comments:

I must agree with you that this was our expansion lorewise. For quite some time I felt that Blizzd played carefully the 'in-game social balances' and had Paladins `mocked' or cornered. After all, Arthas was a pala, Uther died from a pala, Morgrain was a pala and all modern scourge related issues revolve around palas. In a sence if the in-game world blames palas for all this, the players behind the toons act in a similar way (albeit for different reasons).

Hope was that this expansion would be the rebirth of the pala, both in terms of mechanics and the lore. The latter may be so, but the mechanics were messed up. Probably due to lack of playing-knowledge, lack of planning or rushing things. We enter wotlk either badly designed (as per players opinion) or unfinished (as per the implied blizzard opinion).

The problem is not the balance, the viability or the `overpowerness'. Its the fun factor. I have been a Holy pala for years and now I have strong concerns of what wotlk (even after a couple of pathces) will bring. Retry may seem fun but as you said it focuses on secondary mechanics due to the latest changes.

Yes, the enthusiasm regarding the paladin class is quite toned down. We are left with frost-wyrm events and the urge to explore and do quests. But very little to aid the immersion in the game from our class.

I agree that there's been a hemmorage from the paladin class, and for the life of me I can't see why. To be fair, I play a protection paladin, and the end result of 3.0 has only been up for us. Yah, there's no 11-point talent, but we've closed the gap with warriors on a number of things - oh-shit buttons, avoidance, and off-tanking ability being the big ones.

My guild's Ret paladin has gone from bottom 10 to top 3 of the DPS, despite the repeated bashing with the nerfhammer.

I agree however, that Holy needs some love. I've specced Holy a few times for Illidan kills, but you couldn't get me to stay Holy for anything.

But despite the general upward push for two of the three specs, I instead see Paladin bloggers quitting the game, and Sunwell-raiding prot paladins on Maintankadin dusting off their warriors. It's an odd trend, and we'll have to see at 80 how many people were serious about quitting the class.

As for fun, I've been enjoying the new protection mechanics quite a bit, and I enjoyed retribution during the beta. (I haven't seriously played with it after the nerfs.)

I was a bizarre build for the longest time while leveling until I got a better sense of mechanics and theorycrafting when I hit 70. I went Protection early this year and now consider it my "default" spec. I can't speak well to Retributions concerns in regards to mechanics.

As for Holy, I'm not sure what you are looking for. FoL spam healing certainly is not the most compelling thing to do while dungeoning/raiding though I've heard similar complaints from my priests and shamans. The reverse whack-a-mole mechanic for healing is the fundamental problem. It's highly reactive and lacks flexibility. Despite that the spec at least works well for what it is (not exactly a high complement I'll concede).

I'm highly positive when it comes to Protection though. The new toys have allowed me to pull a lot of stuns in 5-mans and rock raids. Despite the seal nerf and the relinking of Avenging Wrath to Forbearance, Protection continues to shine. On my server, at least, Pally tanks are highly desired. I understand the complaint of not having a proper 11-point talent but its not crippling me at the moment.

I'm sorry to hear you quit the game. I hope you'll reconsider. I've found your commentary quite insightful and well reasoned. Would be a shame to see you go for good.

I have all but retired my Tankadin. My first main was a hunter, the guild had a serious lack of tanks, and I rolled a prot pally, even leveled Prot! The big issue for me was burnout. It began with trying to test Beta and also keep up with stuff going on in Live. Now, I get burnt just tanking a heroic.

The big issue was that they seriously screwed with healers and tanks stats. Many tanks who were just fine with gear they had at trying to be uncrittable/uncrushable and have the most stamina never had a problem, but now it's like we're lost. I had to completely overhaul my tanking gear and enchants because I had geared for spellpower and stamina and not strength. Heck, the Sword from Headless Horseman dropped and it was an UPGRADE!

Our guild is such that we're casual, and really if we don't like playing a particular class, there's no pressure. My hunter was my first 70, my main for a so long. I play the game to have fun, not make it my second job and get stressed out.

I figured, well let me try Holy or Ret. Healing is not my style either, especially not as an immobile holy pally. Ret? Not really fun, melee dps is not really my style, and the juggling of spells is just too much for me.

I had high hopes. I really did. When I first played beta, I was amazed. I started in late July, by early September, I saw warriors getting AoE tanking abilities, fighting with warriors over gear in raids, etc, etc. They clearly do not know what to do with pallies. I don't know what it was like when Pallies where Alliance only, but maybe they need to go back to that. I don't know.

Why is that when damage is a little more bursty than people like, or it's a little more fun to play that they nerf classes? They do the same to locks (albeit with a more of a love love hate relationship). What about rogues? The biggest mistake they made was trying to balance classes around PvP instead of PvE.

I will be honest, I was on the verge of canceling my Wrath CE pre-order, MANY times. My hunter was my farming mule, and I didn't do much with him. My pally was my main. I started using my hunter more and have experienced fun again in the game! No more mindless "OMG 490..need more STA! STR!" thoughts everytime I logged in. No more pugging and getting a really crappy healer who can't heal. No more raiding with the guild and stressing out over pace of pulling.

Try rolling a hunter, mage, lock, or any other dps class. Hunters are my fav because of survivability and, honestly they're really fun, along with warlocks. Good luck in whatever you decide!

Not sure where this is coming from. Paladins have been getting a nice chunk of attention (not all of which good of course) and there's 'life' in the class which is more than you can say for something like the warlock.

I am enjoying my paladin tremendously at the moment but that may be related to the fact that I won't touch ret with a 12 foot pole and as a result am avoiding that rollercoaster ride.

Still I think my pally is now more fun than it ever was whereas my lock took a nosedive (talk about a class bleeding away).

"Why is that when damage is a little more bursty than people, or it's a little more fun to play that they nerf classes" because they never thought of it from the other player's perspective. You know, the player you just killed in 3 seconds? Before you complain or QQ, why don't you think from all angles? Every change they make has a good reason to it.

That being said, I do think it's very difficult to balance Ret because it's meant to be a burst spec. But the problem with a burst class is if it is buffed, it gets too good; and if it is nerfed, it gets too bad. Ret imo is just not a great place to be in and will probably always stay as a sub-par dps class.

The developers want each healer to have a distinct way of healing. Paladins being single target healers, druids with their HoTs, shamans with big AE heals, and priest as the versatile healer. That's why they are not willing to change the FoL spam. Basically if you don't like it and rather have a bunch of other spells to cast, just play a priest, but as far as I know, there are still many who like the simple factor of Holy heals. (I'm not one of them, I adore priest healing).

You play 2 other classes, don't quit the game because your spec was nerfed or you don't like the way one class heals. That just reeks of immaturity. Try a shaman if you like healing many people at once, try a priest if you like choosing which heal to use for different situations, try a druid if you like to throw HoTs, sit back and watch bars go up. Keep an open mind to other classes, and find the way you like to play. Don't force yourself on one character and cry when you think others are better.

I'm bailing out on my paladin after 4 years too (paladins, technically, after first a Ally to Horde switch, then a US to EU switch).

It's not that's they're awful. Blizzard, at least in PVE, cannot afford to have the Ret paladin do crap dps at 80. So they won't. Hell, playing a ret paladin post 3.0 is more dynamic, and more fun than it's ever been.

The class is just broken. Badly designed from the outset, it's a gigantic pile of band-aid fixes build on band-aid fixes.

Even when they try to overhaul stuff, they're still working with what was, essentially a rush job combat system.

I'm rolling a Deathknight. Not because I think they'll be zomg overpowered. Or because the lore is cool (though it is, as long as you give Teron respect, and ignore that pretender Arthas). I'm doing it because it looks like a class that has a more coherent design philosophy.

If the community loses such a valuable contributor over such things as the Retribution nerf of 3.0.3 we will be at a true loss.

Personally, I think you are selling Paladins in general too short. I will definately not argue with your issues with Holy's ability to level. Its just not there right now. I know they keep telling us they will throw Holy a bone. I simply do not believe they think it should be a priority. They see that there are two very viable leveling specs with Protection and Retribution and just wont make helping holy grind a priority.

I will however disagree with your take on Protection. As a protection paladin, I just do not feel we are lacking much of anything. Yes, there are three things we are lacking, a single target taunt/mocking blow type ability, a closing ability (ie Charge, Death Grip), or an anti spell ability (ie reflect, shield bash). Can we deal without any of these? Yes we can, we are still phenomenal tanks, equal to warriors in many ways, and better than them in some, and worse in others.

Retribution's nerfs hurt a lot. There is no ifs ands or butts about it. They did not nerf the spec in the way most of us would have preferred. We all know it needed it. It just did not need it to be done in the way they decided to do it. Hopefully, they will see more 80 wws and tweak a bit more. Yet the reality is that right now Ret does ALOT of dps. To be disgruntled they buffed you to the Jupiter and then cut you back to the moon, is to be expected. Just remember that anything is better than what we had before and they are working on paladin still.

Actually, no, many of the changes made haven't had good reasons. That's part of the frustration many people experience with WoW in general and the paladin specifically.

Even if you choose to argue min-maxing and overall design, which to be honest most people see as a lost cause given that there hasn't been a coherent positive design for paladins, you cannot see changing the paladin from underwhelming to awesome to underwhelming again as a good change because it doesn't encourage community support.

Bottom line, Blizz makes bad changes for illogical reasons. Not that the haven't designed a good game, but sometimes they do make one wonder.

Also, "You play 2 other classes, don't quit the game because your spec was nerfed or you don't like the way one class heals. That just reeks of immaturity."

Again, no. It doesn't reek of immaturity, it reeks of recognition. Perhaps Rohan, like many others, realized "Hey, I don't want to have to pay my money to play a game that I don't have to play because (insert reason here) makes me unhappy and there's no reason to have to deal with that when I can move on."

Well, Rohan already said he probably wouldn't be quitting, but I know a lot of people who've felt that way.

And on a final note, there are other developers who are costing themselves customers by making similar odd choices when it comes to balancing. This isn't unique to Blizzard, and it's a poor sign for the gaming community that neither Blizz nor their competition has learned from mistakes such as these made over the years.

Changing to an alt sometimes is not everyone's cup of tea. I play a paladin because I like the icon, the lore, the character. I also invested a good deal of time in it and I would not want to change to a toon with less `depth'. I am sure Rohan feels the same to some extent. So there are two sides of the coin.

I personaly will level as retry because it has been a looong time since I used my two hunder in an angry way. I am also willing to change to Holy to group with friends if a healer is needed. Whether this will be fun...

...but at the end of the day, we all, irrespectively of class, have expectations that an expansion might not fullfill. I am personaly willing to wait for some to be realised.

I have found levelling as Holy to be fun. What? Shock, horror!Yes it is true.If you think that killing things fast is fun (think Ret), and killing things a lot slower (think Holy) is boring, then ok, levelling Holy is not for you, but to be honest, I find the Retadin's ability to kill mobs in a few seconds really boring.In that mode, mobs are just a grind and not a challenge.

Maybe raid healing as Holy is incredibly boring, I don't know, as I've only healed 5 mans, but the way things are at the moment, I'm really enjoying being Holy.

"I personaly will level as retry because it has been a looong time since I used my two hunder in an angry way. I am also willing to change to Holy to group with friends if a healer is needed. Whether this will be fun..."

I personally will level as Retribution, and will of course heal as Retribution in my T6-ish Holy gear. I am not Beacon specced right now (several points in Retri tree already) and am still one of three of our MT healers for everything the game has to offer pre-WotLK. As such I fully expect to have some solo fun during the 70-79 phase.

I must admit though that I leveled to 60 as Retri as well and then switched to Holy for the guild as well. I have no problem playing as either Retri or Holy, both fits my ideal of Paladin pretty well (better than tanking at least, and I have a T4 geared Warrior anyway), so I pretty much assume I will have fun.

Generally I have doubts I will stay for WotLK endgame though, since I played WoW since US beta (and have always had a paladin). I guess there will be some burnout happening, especially since several of my RL reasons to stay on my server are no longer valid. The class also is broken, but still very playable as Retri to me.

In other words, I will have fun with my Paladin, but I can see why other will not have so much with their Paladin, and I think that Blizzard really should think about the class design as a whole.

I've never had a paladin as a main, but it was the 2nd class that I rolled (after my druid) because lore-wise I always loved the idea of a holy, mystical, devout warrior who didn't glory in the idea of battle but rather fought to defend and to protect the weak.

Like many on this thread I've always been disappointed by Blizzard's realization of the class.

I'm not talking of some of the terrible raid-tier sets (which weren't very holy warrior-like!) but more that the paladin class design is and has been mostly awful with boring gameplay.

I've written in comments here before that when I tank with my warrior, I have so many different situational tools to use, plus stances that it feels like driving a manual shift car.

My Paladin however, is like driving an automatic - there's so few situational dps/tanking spells that my rotation is pretty much the same whatever the situation.

More than that, a lot of my skills are passive i.e. in talents so again, it just enhances that feeling of just sitting there on auto-pilot when I should feel really engaged with the game and my character.

With Holy and Ret - I haven't played these specs and therefore can't comment too much, but with Holy, I never enjoyed this spec as I was just spamming one heal all the time which was very boring...

And with Ret... Well it was very underpowered and now errr it still seems underpowered and without lots of useful tools such as an interupt on a short cool down (like the Warrior has), a charge to close distance etc. etc. And that's not even mentioning the lack of variety of melee strikes, which again makes spell rotations boring.

Re. the numbers... It's funny that so many paladins get hung up on the class being broken because of the numbers - obviously that counts re. raiding, but since we're all about to get a new xpac by level 80 everyone will have a gear reset so we can all start anew from alts if we need to.

For me, the main problem is the broken class design and bad gameplaying experience which has been made even worse by the expectations that Blizzard set re. a re-design and what was unveiled was to me a half-finished redesign

Whilst I like the new seals and hands etc. I really feel that it's just half way there and Palas need much more situation skills.

Anyway I hope that you don't leave for good Rohan and I hope that Blizzard fix the paladin.

As I mentioned before, my druid was my first character and in Vanilla WoW, it really wasn't that great but with TBC it got so so much better.

So the funny thing is, is that Blizzard CAN fix hybrid characters and make them fun to play, worthy raiding classes but they have completely failed to do this with the Pala.

And as another comment says, with Wrath the lore and story all revolves around Palas yet on the eve of Wraths' release I think that most people would admit that all 3 specs of the pala are some of the most unfinished and unsatisfying in the entire game.

Retribution (my off spec) is amazingly better than it was. People seem to complain about the nerfs but, to be honest, it was significantly overpowered. In a mix of epics and quest blues, I was able to push 1200 dps out - that's a bit much.

Holy Paladins are the strongest single target healers in the game. Period.

Prot Paladins are the best tanks in the game. The best agro, the least spikey damage, so what if we're missing a talent, we're only going to get better when we get it. What exactly do you want?

Ret Paladins have gone from absolute GARBAGE to one of the top 5 dps classes in game. Seriously, what exactly do you want? You want to see classes that should be cancelling? Go look at Rogues. There is no reason to EVER bring a Rogue to anything. Same or worse dps than other dps classes, NO buffs, and the only debuffs they provide are easier to get from other classes and don't nerf their dps!

Well I respec and healed a couple heroic's for the first time since 3.0 hit. It was much better than I remembered flash spam to be. I had fun playing with beacon on the tank and I used holy shock. It was better. I think probably good enough.

I normally raid prot and prot was working well before 3.02 now I have threat issues due to crappy seal damage (guild has cleared sunwell we have kinda good dps).

I haven't spec'd ret but they are still in better shape than warlocks are so don't complain to much. I think they need to restore some of the mana regain nerf and I really worry that ret won't scale.

I'm mostly just tired of WoW. I will buy WotLK at midnight. I have taken time off work. We will see if it's really more of the same or if I find the fun again.

These days? Aren’t paladin’s always unhappy about something? I think one of your own articles (The Paladin Community) did a good job explaining this, and it is nothing new. Even when Pallies had the best healing AND tanking class in the game, nobody was happy. Like impossibly spoiled children who can’t express what they want, and complain about things that are not really at the heart of the matter, the paladin is the tragic eternal emo.

Talking about this nerf or that is really just silly. The real desire is to swing a huge hammer and heal in melee is what is wanted. Until you get that, even being the best tank, heal, and dps build over everyone will not make you happy for more than a month.

I've just dinged 70 on my new main and he leveled almost exclusively under the new system as Ret. (3.0 dropped while he was in his teens). So I don't really have a feel for what paladins used to be, but I've tremendously enjoyed being a paladin in 3.0.

I respecced yesterday to prot and intend to level to 80 that way and my initial thought is that it takes me twice as long to kill something and I'm having real mana issues both soloing and running SL last night. In fact I stopped using Holy Shield just so I could get more healing.

Our Holy tree is single target only, there is no option, a Priest, Druid or Shaman can MT heal, and do it at least reasonably, a Paladin cannot even attempt to AoE heal or HoT, the play style doesn't work. The lack of flexibility means you take Paladins as a last resort because the others are more flexible and fill the same roles.

In terms of tanking, yes we are better, but we still lack basic tanking tools, still the worst overall in terms of mitigation, avoidance, health, threat (barring the JoL issue atm), and we get hit by every Ret Nerf because Ret can use our seals too.

Paladins have never been the best tank, and aren't going into WotLK, we are good, and a lot of good players made great strides, but we are behind, and we lack some of the advantages we had in TBC (crush immunity, high health) that made up for some of our flaws.

If you look at us from the outside, we look fine, "you can heal and tank", however the effort many paladins have to go through to match the basic level of performance of a Warrior or Priest is insane, my tanking you would say is good, I make few mistakes, but if I do make them, I don't have the tools to get out of the hole that a Warrior does. Thats the difference, we whine because of the lack in the areas you don't see from the outside.

Ret has the same issue, people see insane burst and yell nerf, unfair, yet don't see the ability to be kited, the mana issues, etc. The nerfs hit hard, Jotw needs to be at least 25% to allow them a sustainable rotation, the theorycrafting is about maximising mana throughput rather than optimising weapons and gear, and that tells you something, it might look good on the surface, but something is broken underneath.

Wrath of the Lich King, Change we can believe in! VOTE FOR CHANGE! Wait.. lol.

To answer some of your questions, Wotlk will bring a dynamic change to the game. From my brief play time on the live beta, I see HUGE landscapes (realistic, not insane floating in the air armageddon-like areas), Realistic shadows, a live non instance pvp area that unlocks a secret boss fight to whomever controls the area...Detailed new instances that feel like raids rather than 5 mans. Looks good to me :)

I think it all revolves around the nerfage. It's like the excitement that was bears in early BC, and then the hammer smashed them into the groud, so bad that 1/2 of the nerf had to be repealed. Remember that? I deleted a bear due to that one..

Feels the same for pallys right now. We had so much hope, then got smashed.

I'm actually speccing my pally back to prot, mainly to get into groups. Might need to go back to ret for leveling...

But I feel like this will be the last expansion for me. I don't really want to go through this again...

I have leveled 3 paladins, one as prot, one as ret(pvp) and one as holy. I know... I am insane. It was far easier to level my rogue, warlock and mage than any of the paladins.

The seal nerf has really made seals only worth judging for the debuff on the mob rather than damage, basically holy is an autoattack class that uses melee as a means to regen mana while holy shock and consecrate kill the mob. My ret aura does more damage than my seals do at this point and I have 5 points in seals of the pure and the glyph that increases damage from judgements by 10%. It really was silly that they finally revamped the archaic seal system only to makes seals/judgements nearly worthless. I feel sorry for anyone who trys at this point to start a paladin and goes holy to start with.

Prot is vastly improved to solo with at this point. BoS and HotR make it good. I am looking forward to Shield of the Righteous to see if it is good. I have high hopes here.

Even after the humiliating nerfs Ret is better now than where it was which is basically a showing of how bad it was. I am excited to play my pally trio, but the manner in which they dealt these nerfs was pretty demoralizing. If you are hardcore ret there is a lot of bitterness in our buffed state right now that other classes cant really understand.

The two nerfs that were the worst by far were seals for holy/prot and the mana nerf for ret. I dont know why warriors can have endless rage, but rets (who are basically warriors) cant.

Ill be sad if you quit Rohan, your blog has sort of grown on me over time.

As with others I am a little unsure where all this is coming from, because it sounds like burnout more than anything.

There is no doubt that paladins mechanics went completely wonky. You went from being a spellpower melee to an AP melee, forcing an almost entire change in gear. Not everyone understands how much of a pain that is forcing you to regear, but I do. My main is a healing priest and like you the world changed for us as we became a crit based class.

It sucks that both of our classes have to regear so quickly in Wrath, but given how much more viable gear will be available it should balance out.

Prot got a lot of nice little tweaks and was not singled-out in the redesign of tanks (see Feral armor change). Most complaints are on threat generation due to spellpower loss. But let’s be honest paladin threat gen in the last half of BC has been OP. My undergeared protadin was easily able to sustain threat on multiple mobs with T5 geared DPS. And if we do lose aggro, our taunt has the easiest mechanics of any of the tanks. So given the MT abilities we have been granted, I see nothing but upside to the current build.

Ret. A sea change has occurred. All I could think about was early BC when I was talking to 3 druids in my guild and they were discussing how much fun they were having but all truthfully admitted that bear damage and mangle were OP and should be nerfed. Ret needed to be nerfed, no doubt. Personally I would have focused on the bubble and HoJ damage, but wasn;’t my call. You guys are more than fine.

Holy. You have some big hairy, and legitimate gripes. The game got marginally better in heal mechanics for you, especially as you appear to be a significant AoE healer at 80 (with glyphs). The spellpower to AP change whacks you hardest in leveling though, causing you to go from being the 2nd best DPS for heal spec to dead last.

The short and crappy answer is that you simply won’t spec Holy while leveling. Most of the other healing classes will be doing the same, as barring Disc priests, they simply will level so much faster as DPS. This movement occured in BC as well although I expect the lack of healers to be even more pronounced this time. Hopefully though, this lack of healers will push some movement on Blizzard’s part to “fix” Holy’s overall viability.

"I find the Retadin's ability to kill mobs in a few seconds really boring.In that mode, mobs are just a grind and not a challenge."

That is the most retarded statements ever.

hmm.. you could just not use talent points at all. That'll give you some challenge. If you spent points in healing while trying to dps, and called that a "challenge". I call that stupidity. If you spec holy to get invite in groups easier, yes,that's understandable. Do'nt pull the crap that it's more challenge and less grind to do so.

If you kill things slow, you have to kill 30 (remember those 30/30/30 mastery quests in nagrand?) in a longer time instead of blasting through them to get out of that grind.

We all seem to enjot your posts, Rohan, but if you're bored of the game, don't waste your time on it. It really is the greatest power we have as consumers...if blizz doesn't make pallies worthwhile, they must see a huge drop in pally numbers.

I'm leaving, and I won't be returning to wow unless i see something...new and worthwhile for the paladin class.

I don't believe the lack of an 11 point talent was a major negative for the prot tree, I didnt spec prot till WAY later in the game, I would suspect most prot paladins were the same. I also think we have gotten a MAJOR playability boost post 3.0.Personally I hope that if you do quit, you continue blogging. I have greatly enjoyed your observations.

It's not that the 11-pointer is essential, or that the Ret is unplayable.

It's more a continuous reminder that the class is still unfinished, that Blizzard has no vision for it. The class just "feels" incomplete. Things like the Seal fiasco I mentioned above, or how every other class gets to buff the entire raid with a single button-press, but paladins are stuck with PallyPower.

I just look at the paladin class and see so many flaws, flaws that Blizzard seems *uninterested* in fixing properly. They just put a band-aid on it so that it isn't too broken in raids or PvP, always fixing the symptoms instead of the underlying flaw.

In your post on blogging you mentioned that you wondered if you were still playing a pally because of this blog. Maybe it's time to try a different class, rather than give up on WoW.

I have been enjoying reading your blog for quite some time, even though I don't play a paladin. Your insights into class design and why you feel things are and aren't working are a step above the run of the mill WoW blogs out there that just gripe about a problem without offering solutions. I'd love to hear your take on other classes, if that's something you'd consider, rather than getting out of the game entirely.

I don't play a Paladin myself, but I really feel for you guys. Blizzard handled things really badly and I know I wouldn't be enthused about playing if it was my class.

I saw the pain firsthand in a good friend of mine who plays an alt pally on my server. He was really having a ton of fun and trying to get to 70 before Wrath. He couldn't play for several weeks and logged back in after the latest nerf. He was trying to play like he did before but nothing was working right. He kept saying how weak his class felt all of a sudden.

Sadly, he was saying this while watching me play my hunter with a gorilla pet and round up 4-5 mobs and AOE them down in seconds while not losing any mana...you guys really did get screwed.

I have to say that I have started to like the new spells for holy pallies. The only issue is I feel they want me to start worrying about hit since my judgments miss half the time. >.> And our best aoe healing (JoL) is only usable by one paladin...why bring the other? Just some things that seemed odd to me.

I really feel for Holy Paladins. They're the last out in the cold. Blizzard has stated on more than one occasion "Bring the player not the class" except that they keep leaving off the end of that sentence "...unless it's a holy paladin, and then bring no more than one." I can man a raid and stack all priests, druids, or shamans to heal. However, I can't do that with Holy Paladins due to all the splash damage. This is what *I* think shows the best evidence that they don't know what they want paladins to do.

Maybe they're just trying to convince all the holy paladins to spec to Prot or Ret because they're more fun. =)

When I heard that they we're going to give the other tanks AE tanking abilities. I was a little dispointed. Pally tanks had that abilitiy to make them stand out. I pretty much lost my "special" pally tanking job overnight since everyone could do AE tanking now. I still have a spot but I'm not longer required.

Fine I figured... I started by playing holy, let me go back to Holy. So I respec and find out that I still have zero raid healing abilities. Sure, I use beacon on the tank and just heal everyone around him. And sure, I got the Holy Light Glyph which provides *some* splah to the raid when I cast HL, but we've been trained to use FoL most of the time so as nice as the Glyph is, it's still not a "raid healing" solution

So we're does that leave me? In the same spot as when I left Holy to tank. I can't effectivly party heal any considerable AoE damage so I'm not the best healer to bring along for 5 mans hat need that type of healing. A good example was the second boss in Heroic MgT, Vexsomething, his AoE damage from the flares arcing was rediculous. Same as with H-Arcatraz tons of AoE dmg. I'm a well geared healer, with what others have called "very good healing skills" so it's not like I was undergeared.

I wish Blizzard would have provided us with a different tool, something the lines of what Beacon.O.L should have been. You put BoL on a target and it heals 5 members next to that person. Doesn't have to be for tons of healing, but a little bit. Given us a new "mechanic" to enjoy and maximize.

As for me, I drop Beacon on the tank, tell him to run in and spam FoL on melee around him same old same old just different target.

Am I bored with Holy? not really, am I disapointed by it? Yes I am.

I didn't play ret since I knew they we're going to nurf it. I've tanked a few things since 3.0 and I didn't see many changes so I don't miss it.

I find myself having problems finding my spot in the new post 3.0 world.

I do agree that this should have been "our" expansion. It should of made players WANT to roll a pally. My guild only has 2 active pallys but 7 mages... humm... I wonder why.

I almost chose to level up my Rogue instead since healing hasn't changed. It's still fun when it's new content but healing Kara/ZA/T5 etc.. doesn't require me to change my healing style where in a pre-3.0 it did.

If I'm not happy I could go play my mage again, but that's just 2-3 buttons too but it has meters to look at.

We need healing meters. (yes, I know there's a "healing done" meter) But something where I can messure my e-peen against and show p off. Since nobody cares if the tank stayed up or not, just about xxxxx dps done.